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Translation

Θεοτόκε βοήθει τῷ σῷ δούλῳ Μαρίνῳ ἐπισκόπῳ Μωνεμβασίας.

Theotokos, help your servant Marinos bishop of Monembasia.

Commentary

No bishop Marinos is mentioned in the synodikon, but this is not surprising since the owner of the present bulla lived before the restoration of the cult of the images and may well have been an iconoclast himself.

Monembasia in the southeast of the Pelonnesos. This was a de novo foundation of the 6th or the 7th century (the date and the causes are dispute). The earliest mention of a bishop of Monembasia, Peter. is of 787. From around the same time comes this seal. The bishopric is mentioned in the controversial iconoclastic notitia; from the early 10th century onward it is regularly listed as a suffragan of Corinth (Darrouzès, Notitiae, no. 3, line 772; no. 7, line 491) until its elevation to metropolis in the 13th century. See Laurent, Corpus V/1, 430-31; Fedalto, 511-12; ODB II, 1394-95; Harris Kalligas, Byzantine Monemvasia. The Sources (Monemvasia, 1990). We have an incomplete list of the bishops and metropolitans of Monembasia (Gouillard, Synodikon, 117, cf. 281-82) which had been studied in detail of V. Laurent, EO 32 (1933) 129-61.

Note the popular forms of the placename preserved on the seals: Μονοβάσια or Μονοβασιά, Μονεμβάσα or Μονεμβασά. On these forms, see Ἀρχεῖον Πόντου 19 (1954) 325-37; cf. Kalligas, Byzantine Monemvasia, 35, note 2.